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Children who experience a positive environment at high school are less likely to take up smoking, new research suggests.

A study at Glasgow's Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit looked at 5,092 pupils from 24 schools in Scotland.

The findings, which are published in the journal BMC Public Health, suggest that teachers can help to reduce uptake of smoking by creating a positive environment in which pupils feel included.

Lead researcher Marion Henderson revealed that teacher-pupil relationships, pupils' attitudes to school and the school's attention to inclusiveness all have an effect on young people's smoking habits.

She commented: 'Our research has shown that this environment acts to either encourage or discourage smoking.

'Our results suggest that investing in the social environment of schools and endeavouring to make school a positive experience, even for less academically able pupils, may have the potential to reduce smoking rates, particularly for boys,' she concluded.